


Physical Remainders

by cirquedusorrel



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, Child Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-12
Updated: 2012-08-12
Packaged: 2017-11-11 23:29:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/484086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cirquedusorrel/pseuds/cirquedusorrel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The stories we tell ourselves are all the more tragic because we don’t need the details and the imagery, we still have the physical remainders.</p>
<p>There is a rumor that Ernest Hemingway was getting drunk in a bar when someone dared him to write the shortest novel he could. He pulled out a napkin and wrote six words. “For sale: Baby shoes, never worn.”<br/>The story was inspired by a meeting with Eames years before</p>
            </blockquote>





	Physical Remainders

          The singularity of the shot glass in front of him provides him with the sort of comfort that not thinking is giving him. It’s a singular stare between him and the bottom of his glass and when he raises his hand to call over the bartender, his head follows the movement—too drunk—and so his eyes are on the door when it opens. A man is limping in and the moment their eyes connect he’s already moving his head back down, back to his glass with a sullen stare, waiting for the bartender to make his way over.

         The man sits down next to him, he can feel the sweat and damp from the other man’s clothes. More he can feel the tension the man has as he begins to stumble out a few words in Italian, both too proud and too cowardly at the same time. Il barista is already glaring in their direction, and it’s all Eames can do not to direct the man to another seat because if the barista decides he’s not worth serving he might actually sober up for the first time in a week.

                “Per favore signore, voglio una-“

                He cuts off the man’s request and slurs out an almost unrecognizable,  “vorrebbe una birra e vorrei piu’ vino”.

                The introductions that come mixed with an uptightness that could only be American  are over with the barest of headshakes from him –the bar seems to be leaning towards the left—and an attempted handshake from a man he now knows as Ernest. Eames is mumbling a slur about Ernest’s virtue and Oscar Wilde’s influence before he even realizes that he’s had the thought. It’s not till Ernest laughs and comments about Eames’ lips that Eames actually looks at him.

                “You’re too young to know what the fuck you’re talking about,” but Eames is slowly realizing that ‘Ernest’ won’t be so quick to leave as he would like.

The barista is back over and handing Ernest his beer before the words can really take effect but even then Ernest just laughs them off. Ernest doesn’t care because in all likeliness he’ll forget Eames a step out the doors when he leaves in an hour. Ernest seems impermeably happy and unsoiled. The cane doesn’t even seem to have diminished some form of childlike glee he’s suffering from and Eames is struck with the sudden desire to take that from him.

Ernest is still talking to him, “I haven’t met many Englishman this way, what are you doing here?”

The laugh that spills from Eames is meant to be bitter. “I am celebrating”

It’s clear though from the pause that it’d been closer to a sob. Ernest seems to gird himself, as if determined to continue on, “I’m celebrating too. I’ve met love and come the better of it.”

Eames sighs, “I’ve saved myself some money.”

Ernest’s expectant stare is ladened with the kind of disturbed curiosity as those waiting for the next line in a ghost story.

 “I thought I would be burdened by the expectancy of another mouth to feed, but thankfully through the judicious help of others, including her mother, it’s no longer a concern. “

There is a moment while Eames rattles this off that Ernest starts to smile. A moment that he thinks that this is somehow a comedic turn. When pity begins to alight in his eyes, Eames takes another swig of hi drink.

“In fact, I have a few things I’ll need to be selling off. Do you know anyone who has need of a pair of shoes, children’s—baby shoes.”

The barista is setting another drink in front of Eames again, and for a moment Eames is distracted—surely he hasn’t already have called for another one—but the heavy air emanating from Ernest brings him back to his words. It’s the first time in a week he has intimated any of the details to anyone else. Even Yusuf and Arthur got nothing more than a demand for more liquor. The truth though is useless. He feels no change and while it may be the oppressive effect of the alcohol on his emotions, at the most all he can define is annoyance at Ernest.

Ernest, who is far from being earnest, and instead seems so imperviously young with a face of pity and discomfort. And still fucking happiness like it seeps from him. A fucking disease.

He’d compare them, make allusions between the two of them of the difference that a week and half makes but he’d been happier, and more scared yes, but for all the wrong reasons. He’d been scared that he would fail as a father, somehow be less than satisfactory. He’d been happier.

“They’ve never been worn. Though.”

Ernest has withdrawn into himself already, so this last mark has nothing to hit. And like everything else just rings heavy in Eames ears; reminding him that he’s the only one that it will ever mean anything to.

 

_______________________

 

 

Ernest can see in the body of Eames something of what age gives the elderly. He can see a man robbed of virtue. But he’s not quite sure that he regrets sitting down quite yet. The man is pitiful and pathetic. There is emotion though in his words that he feels is beyond is reckoning. When he drove the ambulances he was most used to seeing shock. He had seen horror etched into the faces of Italians and soldiers. Now though, he thinks he knows little of the horror that was to be seen. This despair of realization is so much worse.

 

Ernest writes home:

“And how much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out and old and illusions shattered.” (October 1918)

 

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the miasma of Italy during WWI.
> 
> The idea is from a kink meme prompt: http://inception-kink.livejournal.com/17947.html?thread=40832539#t40832539


End file.
